S&P Dow Jones has expanded its Latin American product offering with the launch of the S&P MILA Sector Indices. The indices are designed to measure the primary equity sectors represented on the MILA (or Mercado Integrado Latino Americano) market.

The MILA is a regional equity trading platform integrating the main stock exchanges of Chile, Colombia and Peru, namely the Santiago Exchange (BCS), the Colombia Exchange (BVC) and the Lima Exchange (BVL).

The new indices include the S&P MILA Financials Index and S&P MILA Resources Index, which are based on GICS sub-industries classified under the financials sector and the energy, materials, and consumer staples sectors respectively.

Index constituents must be trading on the MILA platform and meet various market capitalisation and liquidity eligibility requirements.

The indices follow the launch of the S&P MILA 40 Index in 2011. This index gauges the returns of the largest and most liquid stocks trading on the MILA platform.

Alka Banerjee, Managing Director of Global Equity Indices at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said: “Because of the scale of their growth and development in recent years, the Andean equity markets have emerged as a distinct region for market participants looking beyond the largest emerging markets. The S&P MILA Sector Indices provide additional tools for measuring the key sectors driving the regional equity market.”

Francis Stenning, CEO of Peru’s Lima Stock Exchange, stated: “This is a very important step towards the consolidation of a rising market such as MILA. It will provide local foreign investors a clear vision of our most dynamic and profitable sectors, with the quality and objectivity of S&P Dow Jones Indices. Additionally, it will be interesting to track the performance of our most representative sectors, see how they complement themselves, and allow us to build around them more investment instruments.”

Juan Pablo Cordoba, president of the Colombia Exchange, noted: “We believe that these tools are very important because they allow us to monitor the behavior of the most representative sectors of a diversified market such as MILA to which Chile, Peru and Colombia belong to. This index definitely makes investors gain better access to the opportunities offered by this regional market integration.”

Jose Antonio Martínez, Chief Executive Officer of Chile’s Santiago Stock Exchange, added: “MILA has been a market that has positively contributed to the development of the countries that are members, strengthening its position in the region and achieving an attraction pole for local and foreign investors. During the year 2012, the S&P MILA 40 Index, which brings together the 40 most representatives shares of the three markets, reported an increase of 17.29%. The MILA countries market capitalisation reached $772,432 million in January 2013, with a total number of 551 issuers.”

The underlying universe for the S&P MILA Indices is all stocks in the S&P Global BMI that trade on the MILA platform as domestic stocks. In the case of the S&P MILA sector indices, stocks must also meet specific GICS sub-industry classifications.